Weekend update

It was (mostly) a nice weekend for me. Friday morning brought little tasks around the house, then I met my friend Carolyn, who had moved to Tennessee and was back for their house closing, for lunch at Keisers in Lowell. We had a great visit - nice to talk in person again! From there I was to meet a scout at the library to review a merit badge. He didn't show up as he hadn't received the message. That's ok, I had wifi stuff to do.

On the way home, I stopped at the nearby rest area, just a mile from my house. When checking on my cache there the other day, noticed the blackberries were getting ripe. Came back today with a bucket and got a nice bunch of them. We had blackberry smoothies with dinner that night and I've frozen the rest for future use.

Just before bed, turned on the news to the second day in a row of special breaking news - Betty Ford had passed away. That will mean an interesting week for Grand Rapids as she will be buried here at the museum with her husband. Imagine it will include dignitaries and such.

Saturday morning, I was disappointed because Steve decided to make other plans instead of sticking with our plan to go to Wayland for a Bears get together. If he hadn't wanted to go, he should have just said so. That was quite disappointing and I did my best to convey that when we talked about it that night. Don't think he got it. Just have to remember to keep my focus on what I do have and not lament the things that I don't have (and probably never will again...)

The Bear get together was fun, though. I took Max and we hit a few caches on the way down, then had a great long visit with Tod & Becky and Sonia & Randy. Vickie & Jim and Joe & his wife were also supposed to be there but didn't show. Thought about a few caches afterwards but it was just too hot.

Sunday morning, after prayer and thought I decided to go with Steve to his Gold Wing meeting instead of going to church. I don't want to make a habit of that but thought one time would be ok - and then we could go for a ride with the group afterwards. Nope. Nobody was riding. So we decided to go for a ride ourselves. First headed downtown, we had eaten on Plainfield and soon passed by one of the houses where the murders happened. Quite a lot of memorial items (flowers, balloons, etc.) there already. Then I asked to go to the Ford museum so I could sign Betty Ford's condolence book. Figured there wouldn't be so many people on Sunday morning and I was right.

We headed down Division to the south. Not too long until we were in the country and headed east towards Yankee Springs and Gun Lake. A nice day for a ride, but getting hot fast. Wish we'd thought to bring our suits as we could have gone swimming at the park. Nice to have that recreation passport on our license plate now instead of buying an expensive yearly pass! Stopped by Dad's house on the way home so Steve could water the new concrete drivewa. Then home by about 1:30 and a nice talk with Scott by all three of us as Eric snuck in just as Scott called.

They have started making plans, thankfully. London and Paris sound like part of the plan, as does, surprisingly, EGYPT. Guess they've found a good package deal. Kinda thought Eric would want to spend more time in Europe itself. Not my decision, I guess.

Today was back to work, but a twist soon developed. Two lines of severe storms came through the area - the first just after I arrived at work, the second a few hours later which caused the clubhouse to lose power. After several hours of dealing with kids in any place that had natural light, the decision was made to close the clubhouse and cancel programming for tonight. So I have some unexpected time to get caught up on the computer and thus my blog entry today.